Modern Primate

We screamed at the Sun for publicizing the girl in the “I can count to potato” meme. So why don’t we scream at Know Your Meme for writing about the same thing?

Chris Menning, at our brother blog Modern Primate, has the answer:

First, The Sun is a shamelessly hyperbolic and exploitative tabloid within Rupert Murdoch’s gross empire of bullshit, whereas Know Your Meme consists of four people in their 20s who are passionate about accuracy and fact-checking, meanwhile making subsistence wages for their hard ward. There’s a thing called “fuck you money” that some people make online, and I can tell you firsthand that these four aren’t making it.

Secondly, The Sun has covered cases of Internet trolls on over 138 occasions, and yet they did nearly no homework at all on the I Can Count to Potato case; they incorrectly stated that trolls had been using the offensive image for months, whereas Know Your Meme correctly documented that the meme has existed for nearly three years.

Thirdly, The Sun limited their scope to Facebook, where Know Your Meme actually implicates 4chan, FunnyJunk, DeviantArt, The Chive, and many other places where it exists.

Fourthly, KYM places the meme in context, spelling out not only how it perpetuates ableism, but how widespread this problematic behavior is; meanwhile, The Sun article simply stated that people should be ashamed of themselves for preying on someone with disabilities, and proceeded to take an exploitative photo themselves.

Read Chris’s entire account of this question, which was raised this weekend by internet-celebrity agent Ben Lashes.